PART FOUR
I
Diana and I are sophisticated enough that we do not try to hide from one another too obviously. We discuss major issues as if we are discussing something intensely, wrestling with the essentials. Still the feeling gnaws at me that we are essentially useless and meaningless to each other, that we can no longer get close to each other, and that when we seem to be engaged with these issues – Should I delve into the frightening issue of Rachel’s paternity by initiating a DNA test? Should we get a gun and keep it in the house to make us safe? Should I tell Rachel what I know of the history between Bruce Gibbs and Mary Kate and of the possibility that Bruce Gibbs was her biological father? – we may just be using these discussions to avoid getting close to one another.
I also stay away from the Transcript building for now. My job is in some kind of limbo, but I am quite confident in a triumphal return at a time of my own choosing, if such a time comes. I let another week pass without submitting Chet Spiro’s column either to the Transcript or to its content syndication service. Now I have all the three-day weekends and “vacation” time that I could ever want, but I do not want any. Being able to lose myself in work would be a welcome escape, but I know it wouldn’t work. The initial pleasures of makeup sex with Diana are quickly attenuated, and on the few occasions when we make some effort to go through the motions with each other we eventually throw in the towel and retreat to a fall-back position of mutual self-pleasuring, with some perfunctory touching of one another, in which I am certain that each of us is hoping that the other will not press again for congress.
On Saturday afternoon I am trying to re-connect with Sam by hunting for spaceships with him. He doesn’t want to get out of the car.
“Should we look behind the high school?” I ask him.
“I don’t care,” he says.
“You don’t care?”
“I don’t even care,” he says firmly.
“Sam, we can do something else if you’d like.”
“Why did you just go away?”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I thought I had to go away.”
“You better not go away again.”
“I missed you, Sam. I love you.”
“I know. You tell me that all the time. But you better not go away again.”
“I won’t go away again.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
“Did a bad man try to hurt you?”
“Well, yes. Somebody had hurt him, and then he wanted to hurt me.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“He thought I hurt him.”
“If you hurt him first you have nobody to blame but yourself.”
“I know, Sam. But I wasn’t the first one to hurt him.”
“Okay.”
He is kicking the back of my seat from his position behind me in the built-in child seat. I resist a knee-jerk reaction to ask him to stop.
“Are you going to beat him up?” he asks me after a moment’s reflection.
“I really wanted to.”
“Miss Debbie says that’s no way to solve anything.”
“I know she’s right. It would probably just make things worse. It’s good to listen to your teacher.”
“Yes.” Now I am actually enjoying the steady rhythm of his kicks.
“But it’s okay with me if you beat him up. I won’t tell on you.”
“Thanks, Sam. But I can’t beat him up now.”
“Why not? Is he bigger than you?
“No. He’s not bigger than me. But he’s already dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he is dead?”
“Other people told me.” I resist the formulation that I know because I read it in the newspaper.
“I don’t think he is dead.”
Sam looks from side to side of the car, then turn around on his knees in the seat to look behind us.
“What does he look like?”
“He actually looks quite a bit like me.”
“He does?”
“Yes.”
“So if I see him, how can I tell it isn’t you?”
“You would be able to tell.”
I try to reach back between the two front seats to give him half a hug, but he resists me.
“If Rachel goes away, do I have to go away too?”
“Rachel isn’t going to go away,” I answer. “And neither are you.”
“She said she is.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She told me she might go away, but that I might never forget she loves me.”
“What did you think of that?”
“It’s stupid. I told her I might forget anyway.”
“When did she tell you all this, Sam?”
“When we were at Aunt Lia’s. She said you and Mommy never tell us anything but we should always tell each other the truth.”
“She’s a good sister.”
“She is if she doesn’t go away. But then I asked her again yesterday and she still said she might.”
“I better talk to her.”
“You better.”
“But you don’t have to go anywhere, Sam. I want you right at home with me and Mommy and Shadow.”
“And Rachel.”
“And Rachel.”
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